Dead Weight: The Windi Thomas and Keeno Butler Case

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[MUSIC]

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>> Erie Pennsylvania 2018.

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I need to tell you about this story because it went around the entire world for the wrong

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reason.

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And everybody who read about it remembers a number on a scale.

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And nobody remembers his name.

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It was Kino Butler, and he was somebody's little brother, somebody's dad, and somebody's

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grandpa.

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And what happened to him in that apartment was a whole lot worse than the headline ever

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let on.

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[MUSIC]

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Okay, Kino Butler, that's the name I want sitting in your head before anything else.

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Because in 2018, the internet got handed this story and went crazy with it.

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They forgot all about the victim in this case.

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He was 44, lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, one of those rust belt lakefront cities where

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the winters are just straight up disrespectful.

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And you could pop in your car and drive across the whole town before one song even finishes

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on the radio.

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By every account from people who loved him, he was the loudest source of joy in whatever

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room he was standing in.

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I went and found his obituary, which almost nobody covering this case has bothered to do.

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And it says he was full of love and energy and had a smile that would light up a room.

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It lists what he liked.

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And the list is so ordinary that it kind of got me because it was pets and music and dancing

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and working.

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And then it said the best part of his life was time with his family, especially his daughter

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and his grandchildren.

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And you didn't hear me incorrectly.

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He was a grandfather at 44.

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His sister Sandra was the one who ended up speaking up for him publicly.

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And her description of him paints that household in about two sentences.

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Kino was only three years older than her oldest kid.

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So think about that arrangement for a second.

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He came up right alongside her children close enough in age to basically be one of them.

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And she ended up loving him more like a son than a little brother.

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At a vigil that spring she told reporters, "If you knew him, you would love him."

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And she said he could be a pest sometimes.

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And then she said she misses the pest.

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If you ever have a sibling who annoyed you well into adulthood, you already know the exact

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flavor of what she meant by that.

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One more detail about Kino.

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He was a small guy, weighed about 120 pounds.

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And that number, if you've ever heard of this case, is the reason you've heard of him.

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And we're getting to why.

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Kino was living with his girlfriend, Wendy Thomas, at an apartment complex on East

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Avenue.

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Wendy was also 44.

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Coverage has identified her as a former home health aide, which is about the only biographical

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fact anybody printed about her.

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Home health aid work is brutal and underpaid and overwhelmingly done by women.

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And the whole job is caring for people physically more fragile than you are.

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That was her resume walking into this.

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Past that, the public record on Wendy Thomas is essentially a blank page.

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Her childhood, her family, any mental health history, any prior domestic cause to that

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address, all of it is missing.

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Trust me, I looked and I would tell you if I had any information.

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Sunday morning, March 18, 2018, they had been drinking.

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Reports indicate alcohol was heavily in the mix and that Wendy wanted crack.

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An argument kicked off in that apartment and turned physical fast.

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She cut him with a folding knife.

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She hit him in the head with a wooden table leg and then with Kino down on the floor of

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that living room, she brought her body down on top of his and left it there.

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Wendy weighed around 300 pounds and Kino, as I mentioned, weighed 120.

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Quick math, that's a 180 pound gap between the two people inside that small area apartment.

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Her attorney would eventually frame the ending as a drunken accident, arguing she passed

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out on top of him.

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And he suffocated underneath her.

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Police had a colder account.

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According to investigators, Wendy admitted she positioned herself on purpose so some of

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her weight came down on his head.

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The Erie County corner ruled it a homicide and the official cause was respiratory insufficiency

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secondary to blunt force trauma to the neck and thoracic compression made worse by blunt

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force trauma to the head.

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Instead out of corner and into English, his chest could not rise far enough to pull air

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in and he had already been beaten badly before that.

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Wendy Thomas called 911 herself and told the dispatcher she had killed her boyfriend.

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Officers found Kino in the living room and she admitted the whole thing before anybody

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had to build a case.

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Before she made that call to 911 though, she went out looking to buy crack and one of

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the people she reached out to was a woman named Jessica Hoopsick.

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Okay, if that name pings something in the back of your skull, you have probably watched Netflix.

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Jessica Hoopsick was a figure from Erie's most infamous crime ever.

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The 2003 Pizza Bomber case where a delivery driver named Brian Wells died when a collar bomb

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went off around his neck after a robbery.

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That whole nightmare became the documentary called Evil Genius.

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Hoopsick gave investigators a statement in this case too and she would have been subpoenaed

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if this case had gone to trial.

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Two of the most notorious homicides in Erie history, 15 years apart, strangely running

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through the same person.

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Once the associated press picked it up, the story stopped being about Kino Butler almost

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overnight.

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Every headline in America was a variation of the same six words, about a 300 pound woman

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crushing her 120 pound boyfriend.

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And it ran in Denver and Detroit in Miami and Spokane in El Paso.

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It ran in French.

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It ran on Indonesian regional blogs.

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A domestic homicide in a town most of the country could not find with a map and a compass

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picked up international distribution purely on the mechanics of how the man died.

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And this had already happened once.

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In August of 2009 in Cleveland, a woman named Mia Landingham killed her boyfriend who was

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510, 126 pounds by sitting on him while he was faced down on the couch.

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They had three kids together.

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Her public defender told the judge there was a long history of domestic abuse between them

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and that she had no record.

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And in January of 2010, she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and walked out with three

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years' probation, along with 100 hours of community service and no prison time.

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One of the victim's sisters asked the reporter whether that meant a person could sit on somebody

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and walk away with probation.

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And the scale at the prison only went up to 350 pounds so they couldn't weigh landing

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ham.

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Ask which detail every single outlet in the country printed.

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Trial was on the calendar for December.

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Then on December 3rd, 2018, Wendy Thomas pled guilty to third-degree murder, which in

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Pennsylvania covers a killing done with malice and without premeditation that you would

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need for first-degree murder.

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Prosecutor dropped counts of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and weapons possession

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as a part of the deal, and her attorney called it "Fair for both sides."

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On December 21st, 2018, she sat in that courtroom without a visible expression and took 18-36

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years in state prison.

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She could have faced 20-40.

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When the judge asked if she wanted to say anything, she apologized to the family and said

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that she was very sorry.

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And then the real number came out.

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Kino Butler's body had more than 90 traumatic injuries on it, running from bruises to stab wounds,

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more than 90.

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The assistant DA kept telling everybody who would listen that the suffocation angle was swallowing

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the public's understanding of the violence involved.

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And he was right, because nobody outside Eerie ever printed that number.

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Sandra Butler stood up and said her brother's killer meant to do it.

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Her words were, "She meant to kill him.

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She destroyed his body."

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She thought the sentence should have been longer, and she told the Eerie Times News that

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their mother still called out for Kino every night.

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D. Thomas is still sitting in a Pennsylvania state prison.

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No appeal, no new evidence, and the case stopped moving on the day of sinencing.

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The story kept moving, though.

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It came back around on social media, chopped down to a few seconds, with a stabbing gone,

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the beating gone, and Kino's name gone from it to just a joke about weight, and then you swipe

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and move on.

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I get why that version travels.

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It's fast, and nobody has to feel anything about it.

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The longer version is a guy in Eerie who loved music, loved working, loved his family,

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became a grandfather before he even turned 45, and who annoyed his big sister so thoroughly

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that she went on the record about missing it.

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Kino Butler.

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That is the version I would rather hang on to.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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I'm Joe, I'm the host, and here's an email, subject, hey, yo Joe, cook one.

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Do you write these or do you just talk?

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Because if you write them, how long does one take?

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And if you just talk, how do you not say "um" like every four words like I do?

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I got a public speaking class next semester, and I'm dreading.

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Later, Cody and Provo you talk.

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Cody?

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Yes, I do write them.

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I research them, then I write them, and then as I'm saying them, I kind of ad lib a lot of

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parts of it, but the main details, the stuff that I absolutely can't get wrong, I don't

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want to get wrong because it's the facts of the case, it would change the story, I do read

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it.

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But some of the other stuff I just kind of talk around it, I ad lib a little bit, and I

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don't say "um" every four words because I edit that out.

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Not all of it though, because some of it does slip in there and you can't do anything about

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it.

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I'm a big "um" guy, I say "um" a lot.

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I wish I didn't, but I do, and I think I'm too old to try to change it at this point.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, welcome.

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Make sure you hit subscribe right now, and then do me a huge favor.

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If you're into brief stories about True Crime, but some of them you wish you were a little

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bit longer, or you had just longer stories in general, you can check out my other podcast.

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It's called True Crime Blueprint.

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Links for that are in the show notes of this episode.

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That's going to do it, that's your episode for today.

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Thank you again for listening to 10minuteMurder.

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See you next time.